کا THE TATLER, NUMB. 59. FROM TUESDAY AUGUST 23. TO THURSDAY AUGUST 25. THE 1709. Will's Coffee-house, August 24. HE author of the ensuing letter, by his name, and the quotations he makes from the ancients, seems a sort of spy from the old world, whom we moderns ought to be careful of offending; therefore I must be free, and own it a fair hit where he takes me, rather than disoblige him. "SIR, Having a peculiar humour of desiring to be somewhat the better or wiser for what I read, I am always uneasy when, in any profound writer (for I read no others) I happen to meet with what I cannot understand. When this falls out, it is a great grievance to me that I am not able to consult the author himself about his meaning; for commentators are a sect that has little share in my esteem. Your elaborate writings have, among many others, this advantage, that their author is still alive, and ready (as his extensive charity makes us expect) to explain whatever may be found in them too sublime for vulgar understandings. This, Sir, makes me presume to ask you, how the Hampstead hero's character could be perfectly new1 when the last new. 1 1 In No. 57 of "The Tatler" Steele wrote: "Letters from Hampstead say, there is a coxcomb arrived there, of a kind which is utterly The fellow has courage, which he takes himself to be obliged to give proofs of every hour he lives. He is ever fighting with the men, and contradicting the women. A lady, who sent him to me, superscribed him with this description out of Suckling: letters came away, and yet Sir John Suckling so well acquainted with it sixty years ago? I hope, Sir, you will not take this amiss: I can assure you, I have a profound respect for you; which makes me write this, with the same disposition with which Longinus bids us read Homer and Plato. When in reading,' says he, ' any of those celebrated authors, we meet with a passage to which we cannot well reconcile our reasons, we ought firmly to believe, that were those great wits present to answer for themselves, we should to our wonder be convinced, that we only are guilty of the mistakes we before attributed to them.' If you think fit to remove the scruple that now torments me, it will be an encouragement to me to settle a frequent correspondence with you, several things falling in my way which would not, perhaps, be altogether foreign to your purpose, and whereon your thoughts would be very acceptable to 666 "Your most humble servant, 'No woman under Heaven I fear, New oaths I can exactly swear; And forty healths my brains will bear, Most stoutly."" The "description out of Suckling" is from that writer's rondeau, "A Soldier." As the poet died in 1642, Swift ridicules the statement that this kind of coxcomb was "utterly new." [T. S.] THE TATLER, NUMB. 63. FROM THURSDAY SEPTEMBER I. TO SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 3. "SIR,' "IT 1709. T must be allowed, that Esquire Bickerstaff is of all authors the most ingenuous. There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake, though all the World sees them to be in downright nonsense. You'll be pleased, Sir, to pardon this expression, for the same reason for which you once desired us to excuse you when you seemed anything dull. Most writers, like the generality of Paul Lorrain's saints, seem to place a peculiar vanity in dying hard. But you, Sir, to show a good example to your brethren, have not only confessed, but of your own accord mended the indictment. Nay, you have been so good-natured as to discover beauties in it, which, I will assure you, he that drew it never dreamed of: And to make your civility the more accomplished, you have honoured him with the title of your kinsman, which, though derived by the left hand, he is not a little proud of. My brother (for such Obadiah is) being 3 1 This letter was introduced: "From my own Apartment, September 2. "The following letter being a panegyric upon me for a quality which every man may attain, an acknowledgment of his faults; I thought it for the good of my fellow writers to publish it.' [T.S.] 2 The Rev. Paul Lorrain was ordinary of Newgate Prison from 1698 until 1719. He issued the dying speeches and confessions of the condemned criminals in the form of broadsheets. In these confessions, the penitence of the criminals was most strongly emphasized, hence the term "Lorrain's saints." Lorrain died in 1719. [T.S.] 3 Isaac Bickerstaff, commenting on the letter in No. 59, printed above, says: "I have looked over our pedigree upon the receipt of this epistle, and find the Greenhats are a-kin to the Staffs. They descend from Maudlin, the left-handed wife of Nehemiah Bickerstaff, in the reign of Harry II." [T.S.] at present very busy about nothing, has ordered me to return you his sincere thanks for all these favours; and, as a small token of his gratitude, to communicate to you the following piece of intelligence, which, he thinks, belongs more properly to you than to any others of our modern historians. "Madonella, who as it was thought had long since taken her flight towards the ethereal mansions, still walks, it seems, in the regions of mortality; where she has found, by deep reflections on the revolution' mentioned in yours of June the 23rd, that where early instructions have been wanting to imprint true ideas of things on the tender souls of those of her sex, they are never after able to arrive at such a pitch of perfection, as to be above the laws of matter and motion; laws which are considerably enforced by the principles usually imbibed in nurseries and boarding-schools. To remedy this evil, she has laid the scheme of a college for young damsels; where, instead of scissors, needles, and samplers; pens, compasses, quadrants, books, manuscripts, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, are to take up their whole time. Only on holidays the students will, for moderate exercise, be allowed to divert themselves with the use of some of the lightest and most voluble weapons; and proper care will be taken to give them at least a superficial tincture of the ancient and modern Amazonian tactics. Of these military performances, the direction is undertaken by Epicene,' the writer of 'Memoirs from the Mediterranean,' who, by the 1 See No. 32 ante. [T.S.] 2 Mrs. Mary de la Rivière Manley, author of "Memoirs of Europe, towards the close of the Eighth Century" (1710), which she dedicated to Isaac Bickerstaff, and of "Secret Memoirs and Manners . . . from the New Atalantis" (1709). She was associated with Swift in the writing of several pamphlets in support of the Harley Administration, and in his work on "The Examiner" (see vol. v., pp. 41, 118, and 171 of the present edition of Swift's works). Epicene is an allusion to Ben Jonson's comedy, "Epicoene; or, the Silent Woman" (1609). Mrs. Manley seems to have credited Steele with this attack on her, for she attacked him, in turn, in her "New Atalantis," and printed, in her dedication to the "Memoirs of Europe," Steele's denial of the authorship of this paper. This did not, however, prevent her making new charges against him. "The Narrative of Guiscard's Examination," "A Comment on Dr. Hare's Sermon," and "The Duke of Marlborough's Vindication," were written either by herself, or at the suggestion of, and with instructions from, Swift. [T.S.] help of some artificial poisons conveyed by smells, has within these few weeks brought many persons of both sexes to an untimely fate; and, what is more surprising, has, contrary to her profession, with the same odours, revived others who had long since been drowned in the whirlpools of Lethe. Another of the professors is to be a certain lady, who is now publishing two of the choicest Saxon novels, which are said to have been in as great repute with the ladies of Queen Emma's Court, as the 'Memoirs from the New Atalantis' are with those of ours. I shall make it my business to enquire into the progress of this learned institution, and give you the first notice of their 'Philosophical Transactions, and Searches after Nature.' 2 "Yours, &c. "TOBIAH GREENHAT." 1 Mrs. Elizabeth Elstob (1683-1756), a niece of the learned Dr. Hickes, issued, in 1709, "An English-Saxon Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory.' ." The work was dedicated to Queen Anne. She was a friend of Mary Granville, afterwards Mrs. Pendarves, and better known as Mrs. Delany. [T. S.] 2 An allusion to "Useful Transactions in Philosophy," etc., January and February, 170%, which commenced with an article entitled "An Essay on the Invention of Samplers," by Mrs. Arabella Manly (sic). ' She had a friend, Mrs. Betty Clavel. [T. S.] |